Are you also curious to understand the inspiration behind every successful Social Media Campaign? If yes, you’re exactly where you should be. A Social Media Campaign may seem like a big task but it isn’t. You just need to have the creativity and you can be the next one in line to create an amazing Social Media Campaign. Also, to develop those skills you can read a few books on social media marketing to enhance your skills and to understand the whereabouts of it.

Social Media Campaigns have nothing herculean about them, but you need an extraordinary idea to go about it and make it a success. You must see a new social media campaign happening every second day and you may not even notice. SO, if you don’t want your campaign to be such, brainstorm ideas and think about all the possible possibilities before you formulate one.

What is a Social Media Campaign?

A Social Media Campaign is a coordinated marketing effort that is reinforced for the attainment of the business goal using one or more social media platforms. The campaigns may be different from everyday social media efforts because of their increased focus, targeting, and measurability.

A campaign may change its elements depending upon its needs and requirements during that phase of the business. Campaign goals should include the following:

Getting feedback from users

Building email marketing lists

Increasing website traffic

Brand engagement

Directly driving sales

If you have a set of goals that you want o focus on, you’ll definitely be able to measure how you go about it. This is going to make your task effortless.

Elements of a Social Media Campaign

1) Create a Strategy

Creating a social media marketing strategy for a campaign is paramount and once you do it, half of your work is done. There is nothing to worry about, you need to follow your strategy and make it a success as your idea is the main thing that will show good results.

A strategy includes knowing your audience, objectives and much more. once you’re done with it, you’re good to go.

2) Know What You Want

You should be sure of your goals as this going to make you move towards it step by step. This is the best initiative that one can take before hand as then you don’t have to waste your time in anticipating the results. So know what you want and do not deviate from your goals just keep on moving towards.

3) Stick to the plan

It is necessary sticking to the plan as the plan is associated with the result and we make a plan to stick to it or else what is the purpose of making a plan. That is just going to be a waste of time and nothing else. Hence, it is suggested sticking to the plan and not deviating from it at all. Also, always take in consideration achievable goals and not the ones that cannot be attained in that particular period of time.

How to Design a Social Media Campaign

1) Choose Effective Platforms

Facebook is the most popular social media platform and almost every human being who uses social media has a facebook account for sure. But then that doesn’t mean that you’re just going to use facebook for your campaign as the social media preference varies demographically. So it is always suggested to keep your options open and explore them well before planning out anything.

You cannot assume your target customer to be on a particular platform and just run your campaign in accordance to that. Do your homework, research well!

As it is said that Twitter is popular with those between the ages of 18 and 29 living in urban and suburban areas, the majority of Pinterest users are females between the ages of 25 and 34 with annual household incomes over $100,000. The main thing is that be it an 18-year-old or a 65-year-old people have different preferences and will use various media platforms and hence a brand needs to know the statistics well and based on that one can formulate a strategy. Most of the brands do not have unlimited resources, there is always a budget that you follow for executing a media campaign.

Be careful with the kind of platforms you use in accordance to the brands.

2) Have a List of Channel Specific Long Term and Short Term Objectives

The fate of a social media campaign depends upon its clarity and precision. You should always know what you are trying to achieve and what you are capable of achieving with every social media campaign that you lead. Are you trying to generate leads from a campaign or you want to create brand awareness or increase profits or maybe maintain a brand image. Once you are able to follow short term goals then only you’ll be able to catch the long term goals.

3) Your Content Should Voice Your Brand’s Value

Whether it’s an image that you need to are about to post on a social media platform or a tweet or a facebook post be it any damn thing. You should always keep in mind your organisation’s brand ethics and it should always echo your brand’s aura.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to establish a clear and concise mission statement and guide all content creation around this mission statement.

And remember it’s about what you can do for the follower, not what the follower can do for you. Starbucks is an excellent example of a brand doing this well. It is no secret that Starbucks is a social media giant, especially when it comes to Instagram and Facebook.

The company’s simple, consumer-driven mission statement—“To inspire and nurture the human spirit– one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time—“ is without a doubt one of the reasons why.

4) Focus on Nurturing the Customer Relationship and Increase Engagement

Social media engagement is one thing that becomes the main motive of the whole thing which can be broken down into categories. A follower might like or share the post that you’ve updated and then somebody else just might like the shared post and the chain continues. This increases engagement and the terminology for the whole process might vary from platform to platform.

Now you need to have different strategies for different platforms for different strategies for a different platform like on twitter you can’t follow the same pattern of posts as that you follow on Facebook. Engagement is a very crucial part that needs to be taken care of. It’s very important to nurture engagement. You need to know what exactly your follower expects from you, the idea is to compare content that is interesting, relevant and trending. It is good if you can just frame content according to one of the three categories that are mentioned below.

Thought Provoking- The idea is to make people think about your brand or product or service that you are trying to disseminate to the audience. It should leave you with a thought that makes you continuously think about it. This going to create a sense of appreciation in the minds of the people.

Humorous- The content can be very intriguing and make people laugh and it is said that this is the most difficult kind of emotion that can be injected by a campaigner into the brains of the audience.

Useful- Try and make every news that you share worth sharing which means you have to create a sense of connection with the audience that makes them feel that you’ve disseminated some information to them that makes them feel informed. It could be a hack to save money or a kind of information that teaches you.

5) Create a Content Plan

One of the biggest social media blunders includes posting at the moment. The key to understanding how social media work is to plan and then plot. To facilitate consumer engagement one should post regularly as this enhances your media visibility and helps in consumer engagement at large. Therefore you need to have an already existing plan rather than being spontaneous about it. Sometimes you can be spontaneous but otherwise, you need to have a proper plan.

Therefore, creating a timeline will help us largely and benefit us in the long run.

The Most Successful Social Media Campaigns

1) Airbnb

Airbnb has recently shaken the world with its service and excellent marketing. The social media report shows, that the existing brands can actually learn from this brand, especially the hospitality sector. Their tagline ‘Don’t go there, live there’ has grabbed so many eyes and people have actually liked the social media campaign. The tagline is focused on encouraging people to have the same comfort that they have at home. The campaign that includes a video campaign as well received 11 million views on Facebook, 56,000 likes and 5,200 comments.

It also made good use of Instagram by partnering with both professional photographers and users to create with images and messages like the one below. With smart design and a message that spoke to their audience, Airbnb really hit the sweet spot on social media and beyond.

2) Caprese #CapreseStylist

For the launch of its spring summer collection in the year 2015, Caprese, the ladies handbag brand from VIP called all women on social media to play stylist for the Caprese Girl. the brand then asked fans to tell which bag would go with various outfits and stuff like that. For that, the participants had to go to the website and check the collection of the bags on the website. Caprese also dragged in the fashion bloggers to blog about their favourite bags from the new range. This was also a very successful social media campaign.

3) Fair & Lovely Confidence at work

Fair & Lovely, the fairness cream brand that most social media comedians love to hate for its regressive advertising focused solely towards associating ‘fairness’ with ‘success’, took a complete U-turn in its latest campaign. The TVC did not focus on fairness as a parameter of success as well as the beauty bloggers who were roped in for the digital initiative, did not promote its skin benefits. Instead, beauty and fashion vloggers created videos sharing tips on communication, hair, dressing and also talked about the role of confidence at work. Read more on Fair & Lovely women empowering campaign.

4) MRF Tyres

After three decades of predicting the rains in Mumbai, MRF Tyres chose to stay away from this monsoon and instead built promotions for its monsoon-friendly tyres. It launched a self-tweeting smart cloud with #MRFRainDay where a smart cloud answered all doubts about the rain, while the wittiest questions won gift vouchers. Fans could also send in Dubsmash videos on the theme song, a chance to win an MRF bat autographed by brand ambassador Sachin Tendulkar.

Did you find this blog useful and intriguing enough? How do you plan to create your social media campaign? Let us know in the comment section..!!